CASES

Museum pieces: Janissary Hun

Berserker Claymore Musket Gatling-gun -

words from which time has buffed away all taint

of fear. We ogle, prod them – static, quaint

as empty, monstrous suits of armour grown

graceful with age – forgetting how our own

hope-obliterating scares, like birds

of prey or rattlesnakes, emerge from words

that might have been selected for their lack

of menace: kneecap aids mug necklace crack.

DATES, VOICES, PLACES

 

Condensation snailing a breeze-block

wall. The 1932 calendar was foxed

and flyspecked. DESERT he said

with a stony half-smile and a lizard edge

to his voice. We carried out

 

brewcans of stewed tea

into a midday; the zinc

shack roof coruscated heatwaves. SMOKE

SIGNALS he spoke, gesturing

 

at a flat-topped butte,

where braves, naked to their leggings,

flapped quivering huge

rings from a damp blanket.

 

YEARS AWAY AND HARMLESS NOW, he said

 

The canyon was a box:

empty and silent; hunters gone

off to line lost cave walls

with enigmatic gestures. GOLD

 

he smiled with a mouth

full of it. His spade-edge rang on rock,

rebounded, clanging. He sat

 

shiftless on a boulder, in a small storm

of hanging dust. QUARRY

snarled a face seamed

like a boot worn smooth of polish – like

dry watercourses. Lake

 

Disappointment, a bleak

voice inside said, as I stood

back in the snow from the vast

sunburnt man with the tin

of tobacco on the ad that read:

GOLD DIGGER.

 

1958 when I was nine.

 

GARDENING

 

You are losing the world, sneered

the cement grey thing

I turned up in the garden – voice

stirring a fringe

of hairs round its smooth, unplumbed

orifice – sorry?

I queried, mock nonchalant,

feigning absorption in my task. You

are the world

and I am eating you, it said.

 

I continued to sort, trim, place. It

held up a plastic sack, picked

blazing chrysanthemums, drained

their orange into it, swung the dozing cat

by the tail till black and white

patches blurred and it fractured, grey

scatter of ash across the soil.

 

Call this a garden, it sneered – well

its not a paradise I said, still…

You and it are compost, take

this plastic sack now, it said, good

for a thousand years, I’ve done

bigger – but by now I had

what I wanted, a last

snip of a withered twig, the whole

 

Monochrome place was infused

with green and blossom, the cool

of turned earth and a plentiful

sprinkling of birdsong. Cheap trick,

it said, as I sliced

my spade through the knobbed

cane of its spine. It hauled

awkwardly off, angling belly through hedge

with a final, over-the-shoulder I’ll be back.

Don’t hurry now,
I said.

 

GOLD STARS

 

Well done. The old formula still

invokes a ghost touch: soft

petting of hair with enough charge

to warm my spine, arch it

in purring obedience

Got it right for once.

 

For an instant I transform, become

the fairheaded blue-eyed pet who got

it always right, said the alphabet

backwards as a party trick

for teachers – cried once

at a sum done wrong.

 

If I shook back

black hair from brown eyes, stared down

an outstretched left arm, perhaps

I’d see my five-point silhouette

of hand had grown enough

to blot him out.

HOMO SAPIENS

As I child I often wondered

why on earth the slow, enormous,

almost brainless brontosaurus

ever let itself be lumbered

with a name so hard to say.

 

As for Java Man! You’d think a

race could hit on a more fitting

image than a bunch of squatting,

imbecilic coffee-drinkers -

I was thankful we’d a name

 

proclaiming mind instead of muscle,

habits, looks. I didn’t bother

wasting thoughts on labels others

might affix when only fossils

of our cleverness remained.

INSTALMENTS

He woke in his bath missing the soap:

a hard jade tablet that had slipped his grasp;

clasped milky sheets of water that parted, made

amoeba oscillate upon the ceiling.

 

He dozed in lukewarm curl of torpitude,

jerked to the alarm ringing (was that the phone?)

The end of a roll-up adhered to his fingertips,

soaked, unsmokeable, uncurling brown fronds.

 

He dreamt in starts – it was getting crowded;

a toy submarine nudged his coccyx, rotated beneath

huge, bobbing, quartered crabs, bloodflecks on grey

marble tiles, glazed eyes on nylon stalks.

 

He sat up as the water

entered his mouth; palms, wrinkled, white

reached out to realise the mist

which had fled beyond blank walls, had left

him, dreamless, to the rub-a-dub of his heart.

JUMBLE

I
Easy to sneer,

when callower, at sad

apple-musty books on stalls:

bound sermons in blue

doorstop tomes, trite

Lives of triumph

over the odds. Those old

lifelines were deader

than the sepia-photographed

final Quagga, found inside

some friendless cyclopaedia.

 

II

More difficult with aids

for my own age: Keep Fit

in Half-an-Hour a week! LPs

of Spanish smalltalk, The Complete

Self-Awareness Manual, School

Recorder Books, Bullworkers – skewed

and flaccid-springed.

 

III

Hardest of all, that cheap

redbound Longfellow. On

the flyleaf: To Diane

on her engagement 1964,

from Mum, and underneath:

Read page 162.

The spine still stiff. I counted through,

perused the glib, trochaic metre:

As unto the bow the cord is

So unto the man is woman…

In the margin, in the same hand:

This is lovely! Easy, hard

to fathom what

the daughter had dismissed

 

Note: The Quagga, a zebra-like quadruped, once roamed Cape Province in considerable numbers.
It was driven to extinction in the 1880s.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

 

Perhaps they’re acting untoward:

Mum practises computer every night.

My cousin’s got some scheme to fill

the spare-room ceiling-high with packs

of lightbulbs he says he has to test.  Dad’s still

hard at it in the kitchen, trying to fix

the fridge by ultra-violet light -

he won’t eat. 3-year-old Siobhan? She bides

behind the window, twists a black,

damp ringlet round her thumb, ignored,

and remarks the many-coloured world outside.

LONGEST DAY

 

The cat, on heat, slews inching hips

lascivious down our narrow hall,

whingeing like the thin ghost

of a frost-starved infant; yens as though

it wished to bite a segment from the disc

of pregnant moon beyond

these fields of brick.

 

Poised on armchairs’ edges, Maggie

and I make talk across the tidied

room. Conversation flags,

to hang limply, as enormous, dumb

summer evening fills the space

between us. Even the cat

 

Sits now, tucked in silence on the hall

mat. If I stepped

neatly across it, tugged

the awkward front door open, moon’s

full face would stare at mine – until?

Buildings flatten into cornfields

inside my head. We seem to wait

 

In the hub of a vast, revolving

stone quern. A world

is in my wife’s nine-month wide

belly, waiting to emerge.

 

The cat cries again; moon

and feline menace twining

in an instant warp and weft of malign

misgivings: two-headed babies, things

with fins, stuff

not to be dreamt about.

 

My wife smiles,

Time for bed, I suppose.

Is the cat out? I shake my head; we sit,

but make no move as yet.

MAZER

 

Bounding alone, hounded by his own

sound from limestone dale walls, he halloos

through the fleshtrumpet of his palms,

calling across rocks. Big feet, shod

with elm clogs, tread the crazed

lane of stonemarkers, laid out

in another age.

 

Clad chinhigh in rawhide, he

heehaws, scissors a heelclick, spins

on one leg, drubbing out

a rataplan on thighfronts, hotfoots

a tight spiral inwards, legging it

towards the mazeheart -

 

Clearly bare from here, so why

these highjinks? what?

this hobnobbing with rock? Will

he make it to the middle – who,

he apart, could care?  As if

his monkeyshines could make the valley green!

 

A foolhardy onefoot landing tips

him arse over centre stone, lungs

like fired sacking. The cairned

horizon skims the rim

of a chinawhite sky fracturing above

pulsing eyeballs as crows wheel.

 

No
discovery except that, for a while

it was fun to caper, fly.

'Certain human beings went pale and started drinking milk.. These genetic peculiarities may have taken thousands of years to become normal in a population, so their origin is obscure.'
Nigel Calder, Timescale

 

MILK - DRINKER

Was not a name the tribe
gave this pale-skinned sport. They called
him fishbelly, mildew, cloud
that hides the sun, ghost, tapeworm, smoke
from a damp fire, woman's discharge.

 

Milk - drinker was his secret
gloating name.. He crooned
untaught tunes by moonlight to the penned
beef-cows, brown as his own
mother, pulled their udders, smiled
to hear the calves complain.

One was a bad joke - two
ill-luck. His sister wasted, died
suckling the bleached girlchild.
None minded that much when he stole
her to his isolated hut. None knew
how he nourished her.

 

She waxed, hair wispier than blown

dandelion, skin pale and thin

as its sap. Procrastinating talk

of the best way with ghosts was cut

short - the lovers fired the thatch

of the hall, seized horses, cattle, rode.

 

Where sun grew weak and none remarked

their oddity. Blue eyes

locking across a shallow bowl

of fermented milk, they pledged

to make whiteness all.

MISS/MESS

I’m quickly losing count of all the times

I’ve come across a poem where half-rhymes

are used as stopgaps, but there must be reams

and volumes of such stuff, the verse-scene teems

 

With broken-backed results of misapplied

technique by types who haven’t even played

by their own rules; and so one has to wade

through muddled, sloppy couplets that are wide

 

Of any self-appointed mark. A bard

with normal hearing shouldn’t find it hard

to nail the bull dead-centre – yet the horde

of poets who can’t even hit the board!

MONITOR

I watch you; all you do is sleep.

I can’t leave you alone for more

than moments at a time. This twisted, frayed

care, bandaging us together through

unravelling years.

 

Coma? No, your smile

disproves that. Besides, you dream;

eyeballs switching beneath

smooth lids to light some hidden scene. I move

in to kiss you, pause, you turn away.

 

Sometimes I’m sure you won’t be there

when I creep out of that bright

talkative party, closing the door

on more weak excuses, promises

to be back soon.

 

The same as before. Each shallow breath

might be your first, rise/falling in pink

light from the scalloped lamp – the sound

almost buried under sudden laughs

at something in the living-room.

 

You won’t die, I ought

to know that now. So why this visiting

of what can’t wake unless I close

that door a last time, switch off the night-

light, cower floorwards into sleep?

NAMING

Sleepless in bed, I lapse to counting sheep.

Like buses long overdue, they creep

past me in threes, with fleeces black as crepe

that slowly spin to webs of practised shape:

 

grey windowpanes, through which the evening star

is visible. Paint-spattered steps. I steer,

on slipshod feet, as scrambled voices jeer

below. Above, the attic door, ajar.

 

A single naked lightbulb serves to burn

dark into shreds. The shape begins its turn

at leisure in the swivel chair; and torn

by various needs, I watch the large head, borne

 

with managerial calm, its blank stone gaze

unfaced as yet. The measured turning goes

on for an age. One finger writes a phrase

slowly in air, familiar letters froze

 

n into stone that slowly crumbles. Weak

with fascination, I regard that sleek

black, jackal head, jaws opening to slake

an endless thirst. It speaks my name. I wake.

NEXT

I

Waiting becomes the ache you went to cure

in the first place – framing a count

held in the head, ticked off

on clenching fingers: her

with the sniffles, Mr Semolina Skin,

a plaster forearm, two sprawled oafs

hur-hurring by the door.

 

Becomes the lost in trivia: dust

whorls hypnotic on the floor the debased

coinage of smalltalk a last

unsolveable crossword clue

 

or a taste: caked linctus with a trace

of licorice, crumbs

distressing the throat, balled

sweepings from a barbershop

that nest in the lungs.

 

Waiting gets longer as time

contracts – a panic

of gathering effects as the last

man in front goes, nodding, through the door.

II

Walking is on transplanted feet

not sewn on right. Navigate

piss-pools, rust-locked apparatus, cracked

basins, attempt the last door on the right.

 

Yes? A writing hand, a hand

extended to the chair. Grin, bungle up

sleeve, make a fist, nonchalant

elbow on desk, gaze at the calendar

hum a tune, forget
to breathe.

III

Now what was

that fuss about. The nurses

are so nice here – just look

at that shiny equipment. Good day!

To the sunfilled empty waiting room, nod

to the chirping bird in a swept street, off

to the café for a cuppa; there’ll be time

to scan graffiti on another day.

 

NOMAD LAND

How come that we

sat up so late last night?

Wasn’t it fun

to gaze into flames

screen and monitor, whispering

fears through the rainsound; we almost saw magic eyes

green between treeboles – discerned

all of our smallness in the face of that shadowy

sound and foliage.

 

Sleep’s blanket thinning, dawn-wind

recalls us; we shift
hipbones on sand, prop chins

on elbows – right to the oceanless

bone horizon, in twos, threes, fives,

emotionless creatures, their closely-

shaved heads an identical

shade of grey, like processed sewage,

turn to gaze at us.

OLD EVENINGS

There were always plenty of people in the room.

As blue smoke scarfed at ceiling height,

the music swelled, ingesting talk, and girls

bobbed, began their dancing.

 

On a bed

slathered with coats, he and she

sat with a waiting look. I gulped red

Spanish wine, turned, groping for a smile.

 

My oldest ex-friend swayed

in silence, then reached over me

and, levering a window out

to blend the spice of summer avenues

with hashish, crushed to ochre dust

on his calloused thumb, remarked: A big

mistake – unstitched the dream.

OVER

For Donald

I didn’t resolve the face or what it snarled

for some seconds. Then, pop-pop, like toast,

the words: English bastard emerged as I queued

at the automatic tube ticket

dispenser (NO CHANGE).

 

Spare change?

he’d called lightly on clear

slow-going evenings last summer.

One of the few black beggars I’d seen,

one of the most carefree.

 

And now it was dirt and sores

on his large young pale brown face:

hurt, hate and shouting things.

 

Take care I fumbled for something to say,

slipping him a quid. Turned to the lift,

as the gist of his reply: I always tried

sank in – not present perfect,

simple past.

REQUIEM FOR A SOD

I’m the guy who doesn’t flash his light when turning right in traffic,

I’m a sod
and if I deign to indicate it’s always far too late,

‘cos I’m a sod
I park my Porsche on corners, run red lights, perform on horn
and the bloke who gets one over me’s still waiting to be born.

I’ve the scruples of a tumour, all the charm of hard-core porn -
yes, I’m a sod.

 

No more you’ll hear me gloat or rev my supertuned-up motor;

policeman Plod

can’t chase me with his woo-woo-woo as he was wont to do,

because my bod

together with the remnants of the car in which I larked

once too often (it’s a pity that I never ever harked

to the highway code) have both been towed away and double-parked
beneath the sod.

REVERSES

Back from holiday;

his slightly stroked

voice on the answering machine:

“It’s Bob, how do you get past the why…

the wizard on the third stair?” a plea

not for spiritual guidance, but

help in some computer game. “OK Col, er,

bye.”

 

Next message: his wife’s

calm request (had she a cold?)

to phone back. Suspecting the worst -

as always – I dithered, then rang,

was requited. That big

abused heart of his – stopped at last.

 

Replaying the crackling tape, feeling odd,

as in boyhood, when I sat

awaiting my haircut

in the high-winged armchair, browsing

stray tabloid leaves: GIRL MURDERED.

Fuzzy photo, smile, curls. How

could she pose if she was dead? But then,

I wasn’t always such a pessimist.

STRANGE ESTATES

To be left alone

on the edge

of a strange estate

with the last bus gone,

 

To stand and ponder,

curse your watch,

as concrete hulks

freight the indigo horizon,

 

And gaze into the middle distance

where a man is taking pains

to overlook his hunkered

defecating dog,

 

Is to miss at first

the voices calling

mister mister mister

missed the bus?

 

Or the man’s soft single

whistle to his dog

before they, both

go briskly off.

TALL DARK STRANGER

With all due respect to old Father Wystan, the question that nags isn’t: why and when will love come to me – rather: just how will I die?

 

Will I cruise death in some squalid toilet

having twisted my ankle and nutted a flight

of damp steps; will It motion and go through my chest on that thin grey frontier where day blinks back at night;

will I pass on with grace and a motto,

surrounded by weeping dependents, or try

flying out of a window while blotto – oh tell me:

how will I die?

 

Will I snuff it at grand-daughter’s wedding,

quite upstaging the groom – or be slain in my prime
(ie before fifty), another statistic

to refuel the rocketing columns of crime;

will I fall prey to some banner-headline-

cum-shock-horror virus, or crumple and sigh

in my ill-fitting rags in the breadline – oh tell me:

how will I die?

 

Will a mob of fanatics attack me

wielding rockets or rocks; will that overdue flash

pop and fry me along with ex-billion – perhaps

I’ll succumb to a mixture of acid-rain, trash,

soil erosion and sun, when the trees are

all chainsawed – to hell with such questions and give a straight answer to deal with that teaser: so tell me, how shall I live?

THAT’S NO LADY!

Who lures you, tripping through the maze;

five senses mobilized to daze

the sixth? Who makes you pay your dues

for walking in her ways? The Muse.

 

Who promises you...something rich

and strange...that’s never quite in reach?

Tide ebbs, she waves goodbye (the bitch)

as you wail, washed-up on the beach.

 

Who thought to gain both lyric prize

and mistress rare? A custard pie’s

more suited to your clownish pose

atop a heap of lumpen prose.

THE DAY AFTER VALENTINE’S DAY

Happening to bike

home a roundabout way, he took the shift

in weather for spring – envisioning some brisk

red-dustered salute from lines of tall

upper-storey windows – checked

by the uniform march-past

of leafless saplings, shook his head

as if to get it clear.

 

But when he had let himself in

to the flat, ignoring the unsolicited

second-post junk, and stood

staring beyond his unmade bed, an odd

equation between air and skin

induced him not to turn the heating on.

 

Not change, but the immense

stillness preceding it. A low

winding sound from far

traffic. Destinations yawned. That form

on his desk still unfilled.

 

Folding his coat he laid it on a chair

with unwonted tenderness, kept

his new shoes on. The cool quilt

beneath his cheek was plush as the dearest

pincushion heart that calf-love ever bought.

 

He closed his eyes – perhaps to dream a high

serene glass polytechnic, set

in mannered green; be woken slowly by

the cries of children larking down the afternoon.

THE JOB

I. Briefing

It’s in the second drawer down

on the right hand side of the desk

in the front room on the third floor

of the abandoned house.

But watch for that box of letters, you don’t want

to go losing yourself in some old

yellowed range of responses, you’d be there for ages

until they came to fetch you in the car.

 

And the same goes for that cracked

wireless set – it’ll only get

alien stations that ceased transmission

in the Bakelite Age.

Leave it off, unless you’re intending to drown

in a surf of babble, gargled down

by the undertow of yesterday’s airwaves, besides:

you wouldn’t really understand the jokes.

 

Don’t imagine that you’re out

of the house yet. In spite of all

you think you recall, there are still things

you’ve forgotten that might

put you in the wrong corridor; keep an eye

out for sudden movements in the tall

looking-glass, remember to descend the stairs in threes,

and when you cross the landing, close your eyes.

 

A final word of advice:

nothing remains unchanged. The girl

you glimpsed through the hall, brushing her hair

on the last occasion,

will have moved on or be doing something

else with her hands now which you mightn’t like.

Best to ignore the unsure, for example the mail

that’s piled up in the meantime on the mat.

 

In fact, I suspect they’ve switched

the locks, and I’m not even sure

if the street-name’s still the same – suppose

I went on your behalf?

Who’d be the wiser? Besides, it’ll help keep

you safely home in the present. Now,

if you remember to stay in one place, and don’t fret, I’ll bring you something nice when I get back.

II Execution

A mistake, taking shortcuts. The better part

of afternoon spent, lurching from damp

clump to tussock on the verge

of this sprawling watercourse. Orbiting, thin

longwinged insects buzz and dip

beyond reprisal. Sunlight’s staled

to dazzling haze. Metallic tastes,

like the leavings of a catnap, foul your mouth.

 

You’d not cared for that tall

gunned silhouette on the stonewalled

hillcrest. No sense at all

bringing steel, tweeds, a hostile blue

stare into close-up. From the next field,

fattened on spoilheaps, two off-white birds

flapped sluggishly up. You backed and slunk

downhill to flank the wood.

 

The premature evening chill

of woodland infiltrates. TRESPASSERS WILL…

on a broken signboard. What will you,

ducking rusted wireknots, find

different this time? The house -

where your requests for water or ways

out of the wood are always rejected

politely – is never the same.

 

In this phase it is still

to be finished: planks, wheelbarrows, bricks

clutter the site. Though as yet no clock

exists to strike five, the men have gone.

An old coat, hung slack on a keeled

chair’s back, draws you. The thrush

is beginning to sing. Quick, dip

into the pocket, snatch

 

and skedaddle, before any shotgun coughs

reagitate the settling rooks

in the treetops. One of these days

you’ll bungle, be snagged high up -

an example to some – on the very fence

that you’ve just scaled. But for now

there’s something in your pocket, hard road

beneath your feet, and the lights of town below.

III Post-Mortem

One fence left. Good. The dogbarks are a lot

of bricklined lanes back yet. Time enough

to finger the goods you lifted, savour the hot

lustglut in thorax, the wellfed

feel of gloating over virgin loot.

 

Neat how you picked just the right

way across the maze, stepping

deft over traps at the same time

as you somehow amassed a most

respectable haul.

 

It all adds up and what

won’t sell should look good on the walls

of the villa to be got

for ready cash; the other stuff

should prove its uses. Time to move.

 

Who made these fences? Hadn’t a hint,

clearly, of what they’d be up

against; easy take your time

now, swivel, bend knees, relax fingers…

and rest.

 

So. You weren’t quite prepared for this slow,

rained-on open sewer; are those

flat figures on a far bank, or

is it your eyes? Time’s up, your route,

for all its length, ends here like all the rest.

 

No backtracking either; that map

dated as you made it. Time ploughed

up streets in your wake. Something

is remodelling the city – you’d not

recognise it now.

 

Ditch the lot, quick, it’s just junk:

your ring of infallibility, the duck

that quacks nesteggs, your handtinted specs,

the set of keys

there wasn’t time to use.

 

Everything must go, you too; there’s a thing

trampling the fence behind you. Yet,

in the space before it shoves you, or you dive,

you might note that I wrote this as you read it:

still alive.

IV Resolution

The chalet swept of all but sand, you sit

on the one chair by a saltworn door

that leans in on its hinges. The bed’s stripped

to its iron frame; your suitcase stands

ready inside the porch. A summer storm’s

fringes rake the beach – goose-pimpling rain

spatters the pane in slashes, clicks it

like a loose tooth in its socket.

 

Through blue afternoon a rusting tanker marked

the skyline in hieroglyph

of iron, shape mutating as it swung

in ponderous compass. It dipped

from sight when the clouds came. Now you scan

an empty sea, unsure of what

the exact time is. The sand has stopped

your watch. The boat should soon be here.

 

One noon your train slid in

to a bare, shadowed platform. A cat’s tail

was slipping around an open door

marked out to lunch. No one to take

your ticket. Taxis sat

in untended line outside; a still-lit

dog-end smoked on the kerb. You hefted

your heavy case and started for the beach.

 

Now sand sifts through your toes as you trudge

back into the sandhills. The sun

has re-appeared – squeezed like a blood-orange

between cloud-bank and sea,

it gives up its juices. You turn

to the other view: a high, full moon,

pewtering range on range of dunes

that have covered the town.

 

Did you time things wrong? Somewhere at sea,

a horn lows out with the prolonged note

of departure. You slurry down

into the dusk; case rattling

oddly light. The hasps unsnapped,

you pause – pull out a wooden spade,

and, levering up a scoop of seadark sand,

squat down to work.

 

THE PUSHKIN STANZA

 

The Pushkin stanza has less passion,

to start with, than a coach and four

that step it out in measured fashion

with little hint of what’s in store,

till geldings whinny, rear in panic,

unsettled by the metre’s manic

bellow of faster as it grabs

the whip-hand from the writer, jabs

him with the butt-end, flogging horses

into a frenzy, stands and crows

exultant while the carriage slows

its spanking gallop. Now the course is

almost run. A juddering hitch

of reins – you’re breathless in the ditch.

THE SIRENS

Gentlemen, he announced,

before inserting your earplugs, if

you glance across to port you’ll see we

are about to enter a rather strange

part of the sea. And now would you please

fasten me to the mast.

 

Strange was understatement,

as the galley eased into the huge

lagoon, the mariners nearly broke

stroke in their astonishment. Who had seen

Colours like these in nature? They verged

almost on the toxic.

 

Turquoise, impossible

to pinpoint as being either blue

or green, tinctured the water; sullen

gunmetal blotches puddled it. Curving

frondtips overshadowed them – coral

dipped in viridian.

 

Odysseus discerned,

secreted among limestone the shade

of ancient ivory, the salt-white

bodies of the sirens, and strained against

his bonds expectantly. It beats sex

with anything, yarning

 

seamen had insisted;

and therefore he cocked his ear towards

the rocks and awaited the first faint,

ravishing melodies; quite unprepared

for the hot, shocking whispers of scorn

that punished his eardrums.

 

They say that in bed he...

He bellowed, impotent. His men, safe

in their bowl of silence, thought they missed

harmony, fancied he writhed with delight.

Later, their ears unstopped, he gave them

an edited account.

THESEUS AND ALEXANDER

One prayed that if the skein

untwisted far enough he’d find

and slay the hulking lurker, wind

back out into the sun again.

 

The other smiled, unbound

his knot in one stroke – travelled

off to cut many lifelines, found

an empire death unravelled.

THREE OTHERWISE MONKEYS

I Prophet

Seaside summer; brown-legged

laid-back girls in slow

pedalos; crazy golf along

the concrete prom; in the air,

small shivering windmills, napkin sized

bright boatsails against the ruled horizon,

 

Which he scanned from beneath the pier.
He knew all the varieties of cloud

from man’s hand to mushroom; saw the underside

of the huge, cool, rotting structure:

big rusted bolts, frayed
cables unfurling, sodden greywood soft
as balsa.

 

Wouldn’t stay to butt a lazy

beachball about, put

out a picnic or pat

sandpalaces into shape; kept

scuttling back to the salt-shadows for

the latest sketchy bulletin

update and forecast

on his frantic transistor.

 

It is not known
how he enjoyed his holiday.

II Sage

Dreamband listening

from the woven gold

wireless speaker in his den. He plied

pen diligently – minutest blue

ink-flecks on dashing gold nib – serene

as the seasons observable in due

course and fashion from the four

windows of his tower

 

South: raindrops budding on fresh twigs

wet washing fetched briskly in

 

West: doves accumulating clouds to make

the candyfloss nest-fortress of Cockaigne

 

North: leaf-stuck lawns enfolded in stroll-home

evening glow as lights wink on across the quad

 

East: cut out goldfoil sun a silver birch like

a well-roped pony neck against the ice-blue sky.

 

in the calm interval

between coffee and lunch he put a foot wrong

searching for the right phrase

took an odd book from the shelves, opened it stopped

 

words blazed

with super-koranic-certitude

SHOWDOWN STRIKE ABUSE

GREEN APE DIRT HOLOCAUST…

and on. His liver chilled

like a chunk of deep-frozen

salt-beef, a three-day stiff

on a zinc slab

 

as facts sank in and the

perfectly sane

radio voice enunciated

dates, statistics, casualties.

 

The phone rang

and rang. He did not answer it,

massaged the bridge of his nose

by the flickering fungus light

of a data screen. Stood up, looked

 

through every window open,

could not see.

III Child

“Such a lousy kid

look at him whingeing: take me home,

with the snot in two candles beneath his nose

nya nya nya nya nya – I wash my hands...”

 

He skulked, sulking

on the party fringes,

those balled-napkin, gift-unwrapped,

streamer-festooned

outskirts, just past feather reach

of an uncurled squeaker, wanting

 

out of the mob hubbub. Open cakeholes;

bubbling orangeade through bent

soggy straws; the overgrown bowl

of amber jelly shaking his private world - “You’ve not touched any of it.” Jeering

 

in silence at cockeyed

paper crowns, failed crackers, bad

songs with worse actions, wishing

 

it over and one with – the great

table keeled in a sea of smashed

plates and crusts, thawed ice-cream curled

yellow in saucers, blancmange trailing

curly tendrils and that lot

silent for good. Clutching

 

a leadheavy slab of wrapped

cake by the jackfrosted

glass door in the porch, parroting

thankyouforhavingme. Imagining

 

he’d sneaked upstairs while Murder in the Dark

was on, eased an unlocked door

open onto blue velvet

drapes, greengold geometries

of carpet and a dark woman, seated
by a silent harp

 

She wordlessly passed him a stiff

silver crown, a foursquare parcel in thick

navy blue paper, plus all the time

he wanted to undo.
He closed his eyes.

 

TRIPPED

Slow spider spinning rainbow fog grows out

of the driftwood fireplace

ash everywhere

and on my fingers too.

 

My fingers aren’t my own, a tide

of wishes pulls sideways across the room

watch my own name

breathed in mirror-writing

high over mantelpiece

 

Light weaving in living room

room full of songsnatches

giddy ceiling shadows all at sea – best

sit a while far phone rings listen slowly
by degrees

 

taste patterns trace palaces across the tongue

behind eyelid visions of tracery drift sideways

electrified intricate greenery, roses, black

floating threads

 

Dreams twisting cold around housescapes

 

Yet through the french-windows had almost forgotten:

in sunlit garden, diagrams show how

the sea in foliage

whirls in the greenery

worlds in the greenery

 

While back at headquarters, ran

sacked palaces cold whispers tinsel rust black mold cracked

skulls backyards dogturds chipboard, plastic crap

 

and so forth etcetera. Personal Warning:

this maybe gone on for some time.

UNBEATABLE OFFER!

Since enrolment at Eton would empty the Swinburne Society

coffers; because winter bathing is risky and rough;

as Watts-Dunton’s domain, where he pined in secluded sobriety

has all the get-up-and-go of a plate of plum-duff,

we offer instead an array of approved and selected

newsagent’s windows where members can choose from such joys

as: Manners taught. Tanya Hyde – Governess. Homework corrected.

And (our bargain this month): Bottom marks for impertinent boys.

VASE/FACES

To start with, you may realise

two facing profiles, filled in black:

like this - but is it otherwise?

They disappear and then are back,

 

two facing profiles, filled in black:

or should it be a jar of light?

They disappear and then are back,

the day is followed by the night.

 

Or should it be a jar of light?

It must be this or that you say.

The day is followed by the night:

but then the night precedes the day.

 

It must be this or that you say?

Why deal in terms like good and bad?

But then the night precedes the day;

the two at once would drive you mad.

 

Why deal in terms like good and bad?

Why make a choice between the two?

the two at once would drive you mad -

that’s all I have to say to you.

 

Why make a choice between the two?

Because we’ve done it all along.

That’s all I have to say to you;

of course, I could have got things wrong

 

because we’ve done it all along

like this – but is it otherwise?

Of course, I could have got things wrong

to start with, you may realise.

 

VOICE

Sorry, can’t spare you long. I’ve got work

long-range forecasts and suchlike in mind

but seeing as you’re one I know from before

I’ll – the things that I do to be kind -

 

Well, I’ll linger and chat for a while

I’ve got stuff you just might want to see,

power status and kicks – yes the usual mix,

with some entropy thrown in for free.

 

Never mind that you’ve seen it before

It gets bigger, more hard, all the time

(like a porno erection): my latest selection

of hunger consumption and crime.

 

And it’s do no stop it oh please

it’s the horror the knowing the pain

and the fear in their eyes at the latest surprise

as I play it again and again.

 

So don’t bother to think you’ll escape

me, you won’t: shake me off and grow older

a while and apace – then the look on your face

when I tap you once more on the shoulder.

 

What’s that? You’re not pulling the plug

hanging up going to call it a day?

Now just listen here son, such a thing isn’t done

I’m the boss around here, what I say -

 

WALTZERS

Were what you liked most at the fair,

feared and liked – when you were locked in

there was no backtracking.

                                             The buildup

of impetus, an insolent

tattooed hand taking your cash, rock

music pumped up from speakers, rush

of adrenaline – blood to the head as you spin

round in the cracker-bright cartons flipped

wristily outwards and back

in with a whiplash swoop.

                                           Breath

whooping chestily, knuckles

taut as chickenskin, face

a rictus mask. Mirroring

your partner’s high fear.

                                        Right

at the moment you can’t

take an instant more, the gradual

calmdown, slack

racketing wooden floor traversed

by the easy attendant dodging

to unbar you from your car.

                                               A dot-

and-carry-one off the deck, down

that ramp towards worn earth which rushed

up as if it wished

to reclaim you.

 

WIDE LOAD

Here comes one more

of those objects we never

discuss – prehistoric

horn a-bawl, setting spoons

and coffee cups all

of a zither; its light ricocheting blue

ice off our mouthing faces

and the café frontage.

 

Attended by gauntleted, squat,

signallers on motorbikes; it rears

stories high, a long, oblong

milk-white container so blank

your hand would skid away

instantly – without recall

of texture, give,

temperature or mass.

 

Heads averted, we squint in the slip-

stream of its crawling pomp, hunch

shoulders, lip-read, breathe

in sips, till noise

and size dwindle; exhale

like undone balloons,

shrug, resume

our disagreement.

YOU ARE HERE

Arcades whose medalled doormen leer

through hanging gardens, tier on tier

of lilies to the stratosphere -

you missed that turnoff, now you’re on

the road which leads to Babylon.

 

Where wayside vendors, taking pains

to suit all comers, hold up chains,

keys, rubber gloves with faecal stains

and divers manuals upon

the unplumbed sinks of Babylon.

 

A prophet sights his golden cow,

kicks up a rabid, holy row;

it ambles past him anyhow.

He grits his loins, one sandal gone,

and hops it back to Babylon.

 

Pursued by dog-packs, trailing wires

from skulls, past minarets, domes, spires,

mixed smoke from barbecues and pyres.

Inhale, relax and radio on,

just motor into Babylon.

 

Think! This was once a wind-stirred track

through desert, with a total lack

of all amenities. Turn back?

You’re joking; it’s become the one-

way system – pride of Babylon.